Page 368 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 December 2008
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concerns of the community and the potential impacts for the community of a proposal like this.
This was a major issue during the election, not just for the site itself but the manner in which this government conducted itself and its failure to consider, protect and consult with the public. And in a last-ditch attempt to get some transparency out of this process, Canberra Liberals were forced to apply to the AAT to obtain documents, hidden under FOI requests, which were denied by the government. We reached an agreement that certain documents would be released, so imagine our disbelief when we found the documents had been altered the day before they were provided to us. After it had been agreed they would be given, after there was an agreement, the documents were changed. So we were not able to get to the bottom of what was in the documents, which was the whole point of going to the mediator in the AAT.
This was the other part of this story, this so-called arm’s length process. These deeds of options, these deeds of agreements, required many drafts—the ones we could get our hands on, and of course there was one altered after it was agreed it would be given to us—and showed the government imposing a peaking power station on the proponents. They showed documents from Mr Costello pleading that such a requirement not be placed on the proposal. We saw the government’s fingerprints all over this, not just in putting this proposal onto this site, but in fact in increasing the size of the power station component.
It seems that the proponents never wanted a power station component that large, but the government was pushing it onto them. To the extent we were able to get to the bottom of it through FOI, all of the draft deeds showed that. We saw the correspondence and when we tried to get the documents through the AAT they were altered. This was a flawed process. This was the final straw for us and we had no other option other than to say we would not support it on the site.
The community totally lost faith in this process. They lost faith in the government’s ability to deliver projects such as this. To the extent that we can draw lessons from this process, we know that this has in serious ways dented the confidence of the business community in the ability of this government to get it done. It has dented the confidence of the business community. We have argued long and hard—and in fact we were criticised by some in the business community, by the government and by others for saying we were putting put this project at risk. “If we oppose it there, if we highlight concerns that this project will fall over, I will take it to Singapore.” Of course that was wrong. That was bluff and bluster. I for one and the party I lead will not respond to claims such as that.
Essentially, the claim was: “You can either take it here or we are taking it away.” That was the proposal that was essentially put to us. We did not accept that. We accept that the proposal had merit, but we are not going to be put in a situation where you say, “We’re going to put it on that site and if you don’t like it we are taking it elsewhere.” We will stand up for the community; we will stand up in the best interests of the community. We always argued that we could get a balance between protecting the community from inappropriate development and the legitimate needs of the business community.
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